Let me preface this with the fact that I am not a Mac fan. I almost despise them (but a couple years of having to use them in journalism and yearbook while in high school, I've determined I've learned what I term as "to much" about them).
However, OS X has redeeming qualities, such as it's Unix core. That's the only reason I would say that I would "like" a Mac. I like Unix.....
Anyhow, at work, we had an iMac where all the accounts got deleted except the admin (root) account, and the password got changed on that. And I'm thinking to myself, it's based on Unix, there's got to be a way to get into Single User Mode and change the password. And there is....just so long as the patch that prevents you from entering single user mode has not been applied. We'll, after 30 minutes between calls at work (and a couple others had played with it off and on for about a week mind you) I had it done.
So I present to you, the instruction for the Mac OS X Password Recovery.
Although there's no real way to recover a lost root password, you can change the root password even if you do not know the current one. You must have physical access to the machine in order to accomplish this task.1. Click Restart at the login window
2. While the computer is restarting, hold down "Command-S" until you see text scrolling through the window. This boots the computer into single user mode.
3. At the Localhost% prompt type:
/sbin/fsck -y
/sbin/mount -uw /
/sbin/SystemStarter
You will then see various services starting up.4. When the Localhost% prompt reappears, type:
passwd [username]
It will then ask you to type the new root password twice, so do so.(Though I've not tried it, it appears you can type niutil -list . /users to get a list if users if you do not know the username....if someone wants to verify this, I would be most appreciative).
5. After entering the new password, type:
reboot
6. At the login window, enter the username with the new password. Once you are logged in, you can use the Multiple Users application (/Applications/Utilities) to change your user's password, or create a new user account.
Let me know if this helps anyone...finding info on this was kinda hard to do.